The Logic of Political Survival is a 2003 non-fiction book co-written by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, Alastair Smith, Randolph M. Siverson, and James D. Morrow, published by MIT Press.

Paul Warwick of Simon Fraser University wrote that the book is "an extraordinary attempt to answer some very big questions" and "much more than its title suggests" due to its incorporation of other elements related to war, economics, and nation-building.

[1] Harvey Starr of the University of South Carolina wrote that due to the copious amounts of material analyzed and presented regarding comparative politics and international relations, it is "Not a quick or easy read".

[3] Each author is in the political science profession, and all have collaborated on several academic papers that introduced the main findings of the book, especially in the years prior to its publication.

[3] Bruce Bueno de Mesquita is a political scientist at New York University who is known for his research into conflict theory, his work on political science forecasting models, his consultant work with such forecasting models, and his publications on medieval European history, especially the history of the Catholic Church and Protestant Europe's institutional impact upon the development of the nation state.

Alastair Smith is a political scientist at New York University who has written about the effect of institutional incentives on leadership activity, especially in the United Kingdom, and has coauthored a number of articles since the book's publication with Bueno de Mesquita that elaborate on the selectorate theory.

The authors notably find evidence that contradicts the conventional belief that democratic leaders are inherently more pacifistic.

The authors introduce several hypotheses on the effect of leadership activities on population migration, disenfranchisement, purges and coup d'états, as well as detail the means by which regimes can transition from autocracy to democracy.

[8] He stated that the usage of mathematical models may intimidate people not with a background in that topic,[9] and that references to other chapters may reducing "clarity" while also "providing continuity"; he argued the latter was therefore "both a strength and a weakness".